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Sample of Other Bioinformatics Majors

It is recommended that high school students intending to apply to the bioinformatics
major have completed four years of mathematics (at least through advanced algebra
and trigonometry) and three years of science in high school, including one year each
of chemistry and biology.Comparable college mathematics and science courses completed
at other institutions may be accepted in place of high school preparation.Students
without this preparation may be required to take additional courses to prepare themselves
for the program.

Major Requirements

Every bioinformatics major must have a faculty adviser, assigned by the Baskin School
of Engineering Undergraduate Advising Office, and with that adviser must formulate
a program of proposed course work that meets the major requirements. Because of the
enormous breadth of requirements, bioinformatics majors are urged to take honors courses
or sections whenever possible, to get as much as possible out of the courses they
take in each field.

Lower-Division Requirements

Majors must complete the following lower-division courses:

Biology

21A, Accelerated Cell and Molecular Biology; or

20A, Cell and Molecular Biology

21B, Accelerated Development and Physiology; or

20B, Development and Physiology

Biomolecular Engineering

80G, Bioethics in the 21st Century: Science, Business, and Society; or

Philosophy 145, Brave New World: Ethical Issues in Genetics

Chemistry

1B/M and 1C/N, General Chemistry/Laboratory

Computer Engineering

16H, Honors Applied Discrete Mathematics; or

16, Applied Discrete Mathematics

Computer Science

13H, Introduction to Programming and Data Structures (Honors); or both

12A/L, Introduction to Programming/Laboratory; and 12B/M, Introduction to Data Structures/Laboratory

Mathematics

20A and 20B, Honors Calculus or

19A and 19B, Calculus for Science, Engineering, and Mathematics (Credit for one or
both can be granted with adequate performance on the CEEB calculus AB or BC Advanced
Placement examination.)

Students must select two additional courses as electives, justify their choices in
writing, and get the choices approved by their faculty adviser. The following courses
are typical of the ones chosen, but do not constitute a pre-approved list:

Note: many of these courses are offered only once a year and have long prerequisite
chains, so advance planning is necessary to make sure elective courses can be fit
into the student's schedule.

Comprehensive Requirement

The bioinformatics comprehensive requirement can be met by taking Biomolecular Engineering
220/L, Protein Bioinformatics; or Biomolecular Engineering 230/L, Computational Genomics/Laboratory,
which include substantial projects; or Biomolecular Engineering 195, Senior Thesis
Research. Students electing the senior thesis must submit a written thesis proposal
to the undergraduate director of bioinformatics for approval one quarter prior to
submitting the final thesis.

This is a limited-enrollment program requiring departmental admissions approval. Please
see the Biology and Agriculture College Advisement Center for information regarding
requirements for admission to this major.

An introduction to genomics and genome projects (human, plant, bacterial, yeast, parasites).
An introduction to genes and genomes as well as computational and statistical approaches
to analyze genomic data, including genome sequencing and annotation, gene expression
and the transcriptome, proteomics and functional genomics, and genetic variation and
SNPs.

An introduction to computational approaches to the analysis of DNA data, including
sequence alignment, phylogenetic trees, RNA secondary structure prediction, 3D structural
prediction, and sequence feature extraction and annotation. The course also includes
an introduction to bioinformatics databasing using Pearl and SQL and an introduction
to UNIX and setting up a workstation for bioinformatics.

IB 465. Bioinformatics. (3:3:1) F Odd Yr. Prerequisite: IB 365

A capstone course to the bioinformatics major that covers 3D protein structural comparisons,
Hidden Markov models for database comparisons, homology detection, multiple sequence
analyses, and protein family comparisons. The course includes exercises in computer
programming to biological problems.

The explosion in biological knowledge spawned by the various genome projects has created
entirely new fields and industries, and a need for trained computational biologists
who are familiar with Biology, Mathematics, and Computer Sciences. The Computer Science
and Engineering Department offers rigorous, interdisciplinary training in the new
and rapidly evolving field of bioinformatics. Bioinformatics refers to advanced computational
and experimental methods that model the flow of information (genetic, metabolic and
regulatory) in living systems to provide an integrated understanding of the system
properties of organisms. This interdisciplinary major will be offered by three other
programs (Division of Biology, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Department
of Bioengineering). The Computer Science and Engineering requirements comprise of
152 units to be taken from the divisions of physical sciences, biology, and engineering.

Bioinformatics Course Requirements

Lower Division Requirements, 64 units

Students are expected to complete all lower-division requirements by the end of their
sophomore year.